Monday, January 14, 2013

10 things you can do to REALLY support #OpenAccess #PDFTribute

I wrote a post earlier today in relation to the #PDFTribute movement: Ten simple ways to share PDFs of your papers #PDFtribute. I wrote it largely to give people an outlet and information and ideas about how to better share PDFs of their academic work. I think the more people share the better.

However, I also got shit from my brother Michael - co founder of PLoS on Twitter about how this is partly a "feel good" action. I do think he underestimates the surge of anger over the death of Aaron Swartz and the momentum right now in the semi-civil disobedience being seen in the #PDFTribute movement. But I also think he is right in part. So, I thought I would follow up with suggestions for what people should do in the future to really support full and open access to the academic literature.

Science, Nature, PNAS, etc... as for #2, I would rarely get to do peer review, which I enjoy because I get to find out what lots of people are doing in my field. The exception to this is PLoS and maybe Frontiers (which I don't really like reviewing for because the format is so awkward). Does paying for making your article Open Access count for those of us still trying to climb up the academic ladder and leap through promotion hoops with a bunch of biomedical "why are there so many authors on this paper in this journal I've never heard of" types evaluating our packages?!?

My opinion - everything you can do to move to more open access the better. I sympathize with your plight and with those who wish to support openness but feel constrained by their institutions in some way. But at the very least you should work for change in the system and at your institution. And dig a bit deeper into the story of Nature, Science and Cell making your career. I am not convinced. If you did groundbreaking work and published it in PLoS Biology I would bet you would not have trouble with climbing the ladder ...

I agree it isn't all about those three, but for environmental microbiology, reviewers still look for the other "big three:" EM, ISME J, and AEM. And I have gotten rejected by PLoS Biology twice ;) I'll keep trying.

DOAJ is completely overwhelmed and unable to update their database in a timely manner. Our journal is just over a year old and still not listed so it's a bad place to send someone to search for OA journals. Do you have a better place?

If I want someone to read and cite my papers (which is what counts, right? )making people aware of papers is half the battle so publish somewhere where people can read it (doesn't actually matter where these days) and get news of the paper out through twitter, blogs, comments, facebook etc. It is proper social democracy at work. If the paper is good it will get cited and retweeted etc. And postdocs and students will pick up on it and cite it. They are the ones who write the publications, bring it to their attention. The publishing model is changing. If you write software as an academic output, give it away with a CC-BY and let the world use it and enhance it. A good tool gets citations. Good data gets citations.

OK, so I do 'brand' my software outputs and teaching tools - that adds to my institutes 'impact' (big issue here in the UK as impact is about more than N/S/C) and to my profile. But if you want it to be cited, get it onto peoples reading lists.

My funders are now demanding that my work is OA all the way. I am more than happy with that. Google Scholar doesn't care if your paper is in Biochemistry or BBA. It will be findable, and if it is OA it will be readable, and if it is of suitable quality, it will be citable.

At the risk of being a social-traitor to the revolutionaries of open access, I don't think that a total boycott of all non open access journals is the best way to go.

First, there is the boycott of Elsevier, which I believe puts pressure on all the others to avoid becoming in turn the worst publisher out there.

Second, among traditional journals there are many other aspects for which I have respect, such as implication with scientific societies, efforts to promote interdisciplinarity or new fields, etc.

Third, when discussing with colleagues who are on editorial boards of traditional journals, I find that many do not care that much about open access (or open source or open data by the way), and I think that joining these boards and interacting with colleagues there is constructive.

So for now I will publish only open access (caveats: including hybrid journals; for papers where I'm corresponding author), I will boycott Elsevier, but I will also continue to contribute to good community journals published by such publishers as OUP or Wiley.

I think arguing that things like the PDFtribute are just "feel good" actions and only going to a pure Open Access world is worthwhile is like how some social radicals claim that giving to charity is just a "feel good" action and what we really need is a complete restructuring of society to protect the underprivileged. While they have a point in theory, things like self-archiving and giving to charity are practical things that can be done today, rather than just preparing for the Great Revolution that may never happen.

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Some disclosures that might be relevant to what I write about:1. I am involved with the Public Library of Science in multiple ways, and my brother was a co-founder. I receive no money from them (although in theory I can get compensated for expenses).2. My wife worked for Mendel Biotechnology many years ago and we still own a small amount of their stock.3. I make some money from sales of my Evolution textbook.

4. I am on the Scientific Advisory Board of uBiome and Symbiota for which I get some stock options.

5. I have received some research funding from the MARS Corporation (for work on dog microbiomes and plant microbiomes).